minsk, in technicolor
by sonofon
Summary: of the confused youthful youth who have nothing, in six parts. Belarus/Hungary, England/Hungary.


01.

The connecting flight in New York left her enough time to wander Midtown for the rest of the afternoon. She debated whether or not to head to Morningside Heights to see a friend but couldn't decide, and was left skipping to the beat of her book bag against her thigh. Anyhow, it was rush hour.

At a coffee shop she ran into a boy she once saw a lot of. He was two years out of Yale now and working on Wall Street. He remembered her. They caught up on Fitzgerald's _Odyssey_ translation and the recent exhibitions at the Met and it was about five o' clock when the boy summoned up the courage for what he'd been meaning to ask.

At the Yale Club, they had tea on the second-floor lounge. The boy, his name was Arthur, said, "You see? It's really not so bad." And she smiled and held the cup in her hands.

"Look—" she said, but he interrupted. He kissed her. "Not here though," and they went to the coatroom where no one would be looking. He asked if he could kiss her again.

"I have a flight, you know."

"Where are you leaving to?" he asked, and sat her on the counter so he could kiss her lips. They were as close as they could ever be, his hands cupping her face, her legs around his waist. She didn't know why she did it, but she opened herself up to him and it was nice for the moment. He was awfully considerate and shy. His eyebrows were funny. She laughed and held onto him. Let me be with you, let me see who you are, because I'm curious I can't help it I always was.

"I'm going to Geneva. For a year."

"For a year."

"Yes." She stopped kissing him to check the time. The time had passed slowly. "It's a study abroad program. For art. Art history."

"We'll write."

"We could."

"Will you write?"

"Tell me your address and I will try my best."

"Do write."

They took another tea in the lounge. Several of Arthur's friends greeted him. They said how do you do to Elizaveta and she said how do you do. When it was time for them to part he rested his hand on her knee, looked at her, and said, "Good-bye. Thank you."

"Why did you say thank you?"

He admitted he hadn't realized what he was saying. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked outside with her. She knew the way to the airport; and he did not need to see her off. It was a pleasant surprise to have had run into him in New York. They would keep in touch. They kissed for the last time. There were no hard feelings about before or now.

For a while they did correspond. Arthur wrote several letters expressing his love for her. It was during the winter and Geneva in winter is a beautiful place, enough that she forgot what his face looked like and she only remembered his features and his touch from his plain stationery and neat scrawl.

He had been in love with her as she had been that day at the Yale Club and what he had not yet realized was that once the moment passed, nothing lingered. She told him everything to keep him away and it worked because he eventually married an Englishwoman from Kent who was perfect for him. Though she did not attend the wedding, she sent a present and a final letter which she strictly expressed should not be responded to. He was a fantastic letter-writer and she kept them as a collection for always.

02.

The temperature was cool in Geneva.

She carried with her a book bag and a suitcase. No pillow (a great tragedy). She had a toothbrush, two empty notebooks, and a camera; five shirts, three pairs of jeans, and a DKNY jacket.

A train brought her to the main station. Arthur was more than twenty hours away. It was far into the past. That was it. She spoke French to the tourism bureau and they explained the map to her. The hostel she was staying at was affiliated with the university. There were no direct buses but it was about a thirty minute walk.

She began walking.

In that moment of youthful spontaneity, it didn't matter if she had to walk thirty minutes or an hour. Within ten minutes, she had come to the bridge and the Geneva Sea. The Jet d'Eau was, as her guidebook promised, a prominent monument amid streets full of watch shops and a landscape vaguely reminiscent of the life around the Seine. There was a walkway that allowed tourists to walk out to the jet. Bored wives ran food vendors while their children threw bread crumbs at the swans and ducks.

There was a small market by the hostel. She bought three apples and a bottle of water. A lady of about fifty checked her name on the list and said her roommate had already arrived. They went upstairs to see the room.

That night she wrote a note to herself, entirely in French. It was an exercise of endurance because even though she'd taken five semesters at Wesleyan the language did not come naturally to her. If she still thought her thoughts in English, she reprimanded herself in Hungarian before wondering how she still remembered her mother tongue before leaving a note to think, write, read, and speak in French. In Geneva, people spoke French.

Her roommate did not return until the next morning. They quickly said their introductions, awkwardly waited for the washroom vacancy, and left separately.

Natalia Alfroskaya was very pretty and unassuming. Her French had a slight hilt to it and according to the lady, she spoke rudimentary English. Their interactions were limited, in part due to their differing studies and varying hours of function. Natalia, for the most part, was nocturnal. She kept to her side of the room, writing her proposals with didactic determination. Her drink of choice was Chablis but it was too expensive for her student budget so she often worked with a cheap bottle of Spanish red wine beside her. A metal cup was always by her side. Clearly it was very dear to her.

03.

Their first recorded conversation, more or less, was about cheese. "I don't like cheese," Natalia Alfroskaya said. "Why are you asking me about cheese?"

"It's Geneva," Elizaveta replied. "It's _Switzerland_. Do you prefer Gruyere or Emmental?"

"No."

"Schabziger? Raclette?"

"No. Look, why are you bothering with this? I have a paper to write."

"You're always writing."

"I have to," she said very seriously. "I've work." It was a Thursday at eight o' clock in the evening, and Elizaveta's friends from the university had invited her to a movie screening at CERN. She thought of inviting the girl, couldn't decide, and ended up leaving early to take the bus back to the main station.

She dawdled by a shop selling day-old sandwiches and bought a coffee. "Your change," said the clerk but she was looking at a girl stand against a railing with one leg crossed over another. Her arms were folded. For the next twenty minutes, this girl steadfastly stood at her position; did not even look at the clock to check how late the time was.

It reminded Elizaveta of Arthur.

The girl had the nervous pensiveness of someone who was waiting for a lover. She wanted to go over to her and say, "He's not coming," though that seemed really inconsiderate and anyway who was she to decide that? She herself could not even decide whether to invite someone to a movie. The girl was young with a steely look. Probably she did not speak French.

By then it was nearing ten and the city was dead. Combined with the chilled breeze and the misty waters of Geneva Sea, it conjured up a feeling that made Elizaveta depressed. She entered the elevator, hit the button for floor number three.

Inside the room Natalia was speaking in a low voice made of gibberish. There was a placemat spread over the worn table, a cup set out for each doll that was present. Four dolls total. She was speaking to them words of hate or words of disbelief. Wild mad cacophony, and Elizaveta thought of chaos.

"N-Natalia?" She turned.

04.

Two weeks later, Natalia Alfroskaya took a walk to the postmaster's office. She was wearing a knee-length coat and secondhand riding boots and carried with her a check worth one thousand American dollars. With explicit direction, she detailed to whom the check would be sent to and in what form.

The postmaster was on an extended lunch but his intern was there to fret and writhe at the hands of Natalia.

"This is so simple," he said, "why must you complicate it all?"

When she returned, Elizaveta was asleep. They had not spoken of the incident; Elizaveta did not venture to ask and Natalia chose not to volunteer any explanation for her having had the company of four porcelain dolls for tea. Nor did she explain what she'd been talking about.

It made Natalia nervous. At night she downed twice her usual dose of Seconal with water and said a prayer for her family. The program was going splendidly. At the end of the year, she would complete her Master's and return to Minsk where her father's family had a lucrative business.

Since then, she had begun to reveal more of her personal history to Elizaveta Héderváry. The story began: "I was born in a barn outside Gordno…" and it was the single most tragic and moving story she had ever heard. Every night, she told a little more about herself so despite their initial apathy to one another, they became close. She talked about Minsk, not as a city but as an old friend who would be forever there and comfort you with sweets and antiquated shops and roads. The best time to visit was either in midsummer or at the beginning of autumn. You could really see the seasonal change in front of your eyes, like a stop motion animation.

"I don't know why I am trusting you with these details," she blushed.

"Someone once said," Elizaveta said, "the only way you can know a person is trustworthy is to trust them."

"That's dumb," said Natalia. "It doesn't account for risk."

"And yet that's what you've done with me, isn't it? We spent the first months avoiding each other as much as possible. And something changed, didn't it, and we can't help but react to that. Trust becomes inevitable. Do you trust me?"

"No."

"Maybe one day you'll feel differently," and Elizaveta kissed her once on each cheek.

05.

"My greatest fear is confusion."

"Shh, it's okay. It's okay. We're all confused."

"How do you say it?" she reverted back to her native tongue. "I'm confused for so many reasons. I don't know what I should think but I do know. I think I know. My confusion haunts me in my dreams; it appears in the form of a demon figure who eats up words and every time I protest, he eats them up without fail. It frightens me. I don't want to be confused anymore. I'm in love with you."

"What did you say?" asked Elizaveta. "It sounded lovely. The spoken word is a lovely thing."

"What are you going to do with yourself, when you know you can do whatever you want?"

"You mean, when I'm free?"

"Will you go to America?"

"I am from America."

"That's right. I forgot. You are from America."

"I was born there too. That's why I am an American citizen. My parents immigrated two years before I was born. They hoped I would go to an American university and gain a wonderful education."

"Have you?" Elizaveta kissed her on the nose.

"Come here." They were locked arm-in-arm. She kissed Natalia on the nose and they laughed because it was tickling. Earlier that day they had seen an old Clark Gable and Jean Harlow picture. It was about a secretary. Clark Gable came home to Myrna Loy, who was his wife, and kissed her lightly on the nose for about three minutes. It seemed so fun they decided to try it.

Natalia poured a second glass of Chablis. "I'm broke again, you know."

"I'll lend you."

"Do you have any?"

"Not a cent!" They raised their glasses to each other and said fine toasts to their success and to their love.

"I love you," Elizaveta told her in French. "I'll say it in English. I'll say it in Hungarian and maybe in Spanish too."

"I can say it in Russian, in Finnish, and Belarusian."

"Say it." She said it in all three languages.

"Do you mean it?"

"I mean it."

"Really?"

"I do mean it." For them, in that space of time, those were the four words that truly counted.

06.

In the spring, Geneva rained. Natalia had a bicycle that they could both ride on, even as it poured and the ground slipped from beneath them. They rode all around the English Garden in the rain, seeking refuge under trees and roofs with no markers.

Elizaveta bought gelati for two francs each and they locked the bicycle to a stand. The row of famed watch houses seemed a fine refuge for the next hour, so they ducked in Patek Philippe, crossed over to Cartier and wistfully eyed the Chopard. "One day I'm going to marry someone with enough wealth to buy me one," said Elizaveta.

Laughing their way back to the park, Elizaveta remembered she needed to pick up a paper. "I'll go back first then," said Natalia.

But she was gone by the time Elizaveta returned to the third floor. Her side of the room was cleaned out, her porcelain dolls and leftover bottles of Chablis had disappeared, and the only thing left of her existence were the small etches she had indented in the wooden desk. There was a hastily folded letter, the ink still fresh. She had run away to Minsk to be with her true love. He had been her true love since they were young. The Master's program had in face been an attempt to separate them but he came back this afternoon. She could not believe it. She explained that she had nearly given up hope; she thought she had been happy.

The last part of the letter ran:

"Remember that time we went to Lausanne for that museum exhibit? It was hot as hell that day and we hadn't prepared at all. I was thirsty and you were sunburned. Nothing was going right. We even missed the train and had to wait an extra hour. Remember? Then we arrived and it turned out neither of us knew how to get to the museum, which was featuring a limited time exhibition on Fellini.

"I wanted to give up. You wanted a popsicle. We checked the map again and tried to think what the concierge at the train station had told us. It had seemed so simple then.

"And the exhibit, once we'd arrived, didn't seem worth it. It was pretentious, all this pseudo-analyzing and none of it would ever matter. But it did. If we hadn't gone that day, we wouldn't have learned the secret behind _La Dolce Vita_ or bought that book about Marcello Mastroianni (which I have left for you). I felt I finally understood everything.

"I loved you. I still love you. I wish I hadn't been so cold in the beginning. I wish I could go back and change how I'd acted. This is all part of my confusion. Fellini helped but it is neither him nor you who can clear up my doubts. Well, He's back, and I love him so much I can't give him up again and it will work this time because we are older. I hurt myself just thinking how much I cannot bear to leave him so I try not to think and I hate that, you know?

"If I don't take this chance, it will be the end for me. I hope you can understand."

Elizaveta had to sit down. She whispered to herself: "Oh, my God."


End file.
